So
in an increasingly foul frame of mind, in the damning spirit of
either or and shielding myself from painful effects by not looking,
I came to my destination, the curb at Seventh Street where the
combis to Borrowdale run.

They
were standing there, not the same ones but a similar variety, the
young girls stepping back into the shade of scarlet blossoming flame
trees planted by an early generation of colonials, a different
species of traveller, and fanning the expanses of flesh exposed by
boob tubes and spaghetti straps with long slender, languid hands
ending in long pointed nails painted black and gold and crimson.
The first combi ripped by, lights flashing in warning, shrouding us
in exhaust fumes. The conductor gripped the chassis hard with one
hand, hanging out in such a style as to prevent the bodies of two
little school-children from falling onto the tarmac, instilling into
his charges the notions they would carry with them for many a year
of reasonable risk and safety. He smiled and waved at us merrily.

“Tss!” one of the girls sucked her teeth, the one dressed in
chocolate pin stripe trousers and a ruched cream boob tube. “Tss!”
she hissed again in lazy contempt. “Those conductors!” Her
disapproval coiled out in slow, unfocused whirls, “Vana hwindi!”
as though no-one had taught her, or she had refused to learn, the
advantages of direction and energy.

The
girl’s chocolate and cream mellowness, sticky and cloying as a
marshmallow, was infuriating; or it could have been the passage of
the combi which did not augur well for the vehicles to come: for
some time they would be packed with bodies and Mabs Riley might
begin her weekend tasks: visiting other widows like herself, holding
book sales for the Rotary Club, or shopping. In any case the
various anxieties I was suffering without the capacity to
acknowledge pressed at me unpleasantly and pushed out my bottom lip
in disapprobation of the slim young woman. At the same time I looked
as far as was possible in scorn down my nose. It was all executed
quietly and stealthily, relief intended to be stolen from a little
inconspicuous steam-letting; but the girl in chocolate pin stripes
turned back to search down the street for more combis, so that she
quickly and mercilessly observed what I was up to, at which, with a
raucous, all at once energetic giggle she nudged the nucleus of
young women about her. How outrageous this immediately was! Of
course, I could not endure the silly under-clad youngsters enjoying
the notion I was sufficiently desperate to envy them. So, with
little creativity, not being able to think of a more eloquent
action, I made my otherness from them very obvious by smoothing the
skirt to my suit down as far as it went. The nucleus of young women
burst out laughing.

This
in turn drew attention to them. A general ripple of merriment
danced through the gaggle of human beings on the curb.

"But
women!" Now it was a young man chuckling. “What is it with these
women! Some of them just walk just like that! With everything in
the open!" Some age mates of his standing nearby grinned. They
slitted their eyes in speculation and let their observation, like a
single gaze, meander over the young women. "Ah, they want to
inflame us!" The speaker sighed, and continued with amused
indignation. "Now, isn’t it known that when it’s like that it can’t
be stopped! So what if we don't want to begin and be inflamed! And
get a gaol sentence? We don't want! Now these hussies want to put
us in gaol! People, isn’t that why! Isn't that what makes people
stone them!

"But
then there’s this other question here of overdoing things?" With
this he began laughing openly, employing the curl of the nostrils
people affect when they speak of matters in which they have agreed
upon they are superior. And my own nostril curled too, with a sad
and precious little relief at the ravaging the girls were receiving.

"Just see how much some others cover up," he shook his head
wittily. “Even the things noone wants to see, that wouldn‘t be
looked at even if they were out in the open! Now, this sort, is
there anything for them! They might as well start forgetting!"

Now,
of course, I had brought this upon myself, but I did not have time
to reflect on this, what I had done, why, what, if anything, might
be done differently with more propitious results, since I was dying
of embarrassment. The speaker was younger than me, if older than
the gang of gigglers. I grasped on the former fact to keep my
dignity, simmering all the while in hostility at the girls who,
practically naked as they were, were rolling their eyes and clicking
their tongues at me in a demeaning manner, unashamed of anything:
and as I watched them they increased, in their own collective scorn,
undulation of everything that curved out from their waistlines -
bottoms, hips, busts and even chins instinctively in automatic
seduction. Examining me with sidelong glances, they reacted with
more half hidden giggles, and, with imperceptible turns in the young
men's direction.

We
were interrupted by a push and shove from every side. A combi,
belched down, birds flapping away from billowing exhaust fumes. Up
it hurtled past the speed limit towards us from the rank after
engorging a load of workers. We all swept back, afraid for
indispensable body parts, if not life itself. Next the driver
applied the brakes which wailed more acutely than a bereaved family,
and even though the vehicle had only slowed without coming to a
stop, at that small concession, everybody heaved forward, like
starving people toward a sack of grain, so eager were we to get
where we were going.

Finally it was stationary and we surged up. In the vehicle, I took
out a ten-dollar note for fare. The conductor was youthful too and
ignored me, looking down over the girl in the chocolate pinstripes,
who, having managed to scramble up the step, looked round, eyes
peering from under his armpit, so that I fell faint, imagining the
lack of deodorant.

"Are
you going, or aren't you," the conductor rasped. "Because if you
don't," he did not give her time to answer. "If you don't know what
you want, and we move you might just end up falling!" His fist
balled, stretched past the girl's ear into the morning and thudded a
couple of times on the combi roof. It was the sign for the vehicle
to move, and we, who were seated, turned our heads to the young man
with the onset of horror. No one dared say anything. People were
dying for answering transport touts and combi conductors without
sufficient respect. Everyone knew it, and the rate was increasing.
A reckless word could have the conductor banging on the roof in a
frenzy, with the driver stepping on the petrol even while a
passenger had a foot on the curb; and by the time the passenger was
pulled free from the combi by the potholes and stones in the road,
he or she was past recognition. Meanwhile the combi driver drove on
to his rank, passengers alighted fearfully as soon as they were let
out, and colleagues at the rank swore when questioned that business
was slow: how could the driver have perpetrated such an act if he
had been at the rank all morning.

So
we feared for the girl in a silence made passive by other fears: and
we equally silently prayed we would not be driven past our
destinations, as being late for anything would make our lives more
complicated than they already were. Fortunately, the conductor
relented when the young woman smiled in impeccable Shona, "Would I
fail to go, brother-in-law, if there was space. But as you see
there are many of us. So tell your driver to stop a while. Won't
you say it! Isn't it so, it's only when you speak that this car
stops! You have to say it so the driver can listen!"

"Who-o!" the driver opened his palm to the blue sky. Thud! Thud!
it descended on the combi roof. The driver took his foot off the
accelerator.

The
young woman, her mind now focussed on her safety, scrambled down.
On the curb again, she bunched up with her companions. We all leant
back in our seats in relief. Another young man beside me opened his
newspaper, so that his elbow dug obliviously into my ribs, but he
could not concentrate for long.

"Now
look at them!" the young man from the curb resumed in an incisive
tone that cut into everything. I leant forward to attract the
conductor's attention and to take my mind from more male talk. The
conductor continued to serve people in the front seats directly
behind the driver and to ignore me. A woman of about my age, whom I
had noticed out of the corner of my eye as we stood in the queue
together, smiled.

"Ko, imi,
what are you smiling at?" I snapped roughly, still flapping the bank
note and hoping it would soon serve its purpose. "Is there anything
that's just happened, heh, that could make anybody do that!"

"Ah,
I just said this is the stuff of BP,” she said more or less
graciously. “And I didn‘t know that‘s forbidden too now! I hadn't
heard it said that now in Zimbabwe you can be arrested for smiling!"

Fortunately also, the conductor stretched a hand back for my note.
The woman passed it to him. I said thank you in order not to be too
unconciliatory, and sank back into ignoring everything as the combi
shuddered up Borrowdale Road.

Note: A bira is a ceremony to communicate with ancestors
for a given purpose.